Heteronormativity is a strange, but powerful thing. When a little girl and little boy play together, adults will project these odd notions onto them, making jokes about a future romance between the children. However, when two girls play together, it isn’t likely the same remarks will be made about their relationship. In Susan Shaw and Janet Lee's chapter on Sex and Intimacy, they detail that sexual scripts “provide frameworks and guidelines for sexual feelings and behaviors in a particular community at a particular time” and marks a crucial note that “foundational in these scripts is the oppositional binary of heterosexuality and homosexuality that constructs normative sexuality and shapes sexual feelings and expression” (281). This social construction, of course, manages to ooze into our media, specifically in its representation of female friendship. As a bisexual woman with many gay friends, a frequent topic of conversation is the almost obligatory heterosexuality among female fr
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I think the issue at hand is not the shoes themselves. They are merely things. The fact that women need a "leg up" to be seen as powerful or need to wear them to feel sexy is the real problem. I can't find flat, professional dress shoes, so heals are almost required. If you are walking a lot at work, this can cause all sorts of painful problems.
When you think about it, the reason for this can be taken a few ways. The media, which sets standards of beauty, tells women to wear heals for the reasons above. So women wouldn't buy flats, so therefore there is no market. Also, men want women to be sexy, so again, no designers saying that flats are stylish. For a more radical take on it, one could argue that heals are oppressive because they limit a woman's movement. By limiting our movement (think feet-binding in China), it helps to keep women out of powerful positions, keep us vulnerable, and ultimately simply sexual objects.
Ani- Why are women forced to be sexy? Why is it that beautiful girls sell everything because that is what grabs male’s attention? I actually had a friend tell me this week how her friend hired her for a few hours to sit at a desk and look like a receptionist for a business meeting he had just so he had a beautiful girl...sad! If a male is doing the hiring process do you think he is more likely to hire a more qualified woman or a beautiful woman?